Shares of Sturm Ruger & Co. (RGR) were up as high as 14 percent Thursday afternoon after CEO Michael Fifer announced the company was temporarily suspending its acceptance of new orders in an effort to meet a dramatic surge in demand for its products.

“Despite the company’s continuing successful efforts to increase production rates, the incoming order rate exceeds our capacity to rapidly fulfill these orders,” Fifer said in the statement late Wednesday.

Ruger received more than a million order requests in the first quarter of 2012.

Shares of rival firearm maker Smith & Wesson (SWHC) were similarly up about 13 percent Thursday — a sign, gun proponents say, that Americans are not swayed by the recent protests.

“I think it’s evidence that no one believes that the ‘stand your ground’ law is flawed or had a role in precipitating this tragedy,” said Michael Hammond, legislative counsel for Gun Owners of America. “Government by lynch mob hasn’t worked particularly well in this country when it’s been employed, and I don’t think it’s going to work now.”

Martin’s killing, which took place in Florida, has sparked controversy over the state’s so-called “stand your ground” law allowing individuals to use lethal force, rather than flee, in threatening situations.

Law abiding Americans now easily qualify as the most heavily armed population in the world.
By Fredy Riehl

AmmoLand Gun News

Manasquan, NJ –-(Ammoland.com)- Recent statistics released by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) report that for nineteen straight months, and that includes all of 2011, American men & women bought over 10,800,000 plus firearms.

This number based on the FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System, better know as NICS, and is the adjusted NICS data derived by the NSSF research division subtracting out NICS purpose code permit checks used by several states such as Kentucky, Iowa and Utah for carrying concealed weapon (CCW) permit application checks as well as checks on active CCW permit databases.

The final number, of 10,800,000, is considered conservative by experts because the this number does not account for the multiple purchase of guns at the same time or the guns bought and sold legally, person to person by US residents, which rightly so, do not require a back ground check.

Ten Million new gun owners, in just 2011, should be a wake up call to our current President who continues to play dumb that his hate of bible clinging, gun toting American Values, like hunting & owning guns will not be tolerated. His and Eric Holder’s “under the radar” plan to sell guns to evil Mexican Gun Cartels in an effort to set up the Second Amendment as the fall guy now has ten million people angry at him.

If just one current Presidential candidate (Ron Paul aside..) could prove his sworn support for the Second Amendment, and the constitution for that matter, and rally our forces behind him he would be swept into the white house on a massive wave of support. Can you say Ted Nugent?

So what does 10,800,000 look like?
The guns purchased by American men & women in 2011 is more than one gun for every active duty military member in the worlds fourteen largest armies combined.

If you assume an average length of each gun as two feet that would be 4090 miles of guns. That is fourteen times the length of the Grand Canyon and all most twice as long as the Mississippi River and 17,280 times higher than the Empire State Building.

I could not find a picture of 10,800, 000 guns but here is what 10,800, 000 firecrackers look like:

Hello, I am an Ammo Horder?
So let assume each new gun owner buys 2000 rounds of Ammo (a single brick of 22lr is 500 rounds and my kids can burn that up in an afternoon) , times that by our conservative estimate of 10,800,000 firearms your get 21,600,000,000…that is trillion with a “T”.

That is a lot of lead and other raw materials and you wonder why we are paying so much for Ammo these days? And I see no let up in sight because if you are like me you think to yourself that when the liberal news media reports that some guy is stopped at the airport with “1000 Rounds on him”.. that dude was almost out of ammo?

Ammunition retailer Frank Brownell of Brownells.com, predicts “[2012] will most assuredly be another year for the growth of ammunition sales. An astronomical year of ammunition sales” .

This is the one sector of our national economy that I would agree to a Federal Stimulus package, maybe each US family can get a tax credit to purchase 10,000 rounds of ammo as a part of emergency preparedness program.

Speaking of America Industry
American gun manufacturing is one of the first and last great US industries.

It was Eli Whitney, yeah the guy who made the cotton gin, who was one of the first manufacturers in the world to carry out standardization of manufactured parts.

As early as 1798, Eli Whitney had turned his talents to the manufacture of firearms. He had established his machine shops at Whitneyville, near New Haven, CT and it was there that he worked out the principle of standardization or interchangeable parts.

Standardization is the foundation of all large-scale production. Manufacturers produce separately many copies of every part of a complicated machine like firearms on an assembly line. Standardization also allowed current owners of guns to order and replace any broken or lost part, taking it for granted that the new part would fit easily and precisely into the place of the old.

In effect the manufacture of firearms is the spark that brought to life American Manufacturing and it is that same industry today that still makes almost all its products in the USA, using raw materials, machinist and labor to turn out some of the best made products on earth, namely Guns. Guns made by American workers in American factories for American consumers.

Guns and Freedom
Guns and gun ownership represent the core of elements of freedom and of the constitution. Without the Second Amendment there would be no protection for all the other god given rights we are reminded of by our constitution. Just as we teach our children the value of voting or free speech we should also be teaching them.. get ready, aim and fire, repeat.

I am glad to see so many of my fellow Americans decided to exercise their right to keep and bear arms over the last year and I hope we continue to see record growth in gun ownership in the year to come. America, Hell Yeah!

Americans bought record numbers of guns last month amid an apparent surge in popularity for weapons as Christmas presents.

According to the FBI, over 1.5 million background checks on customers were requested by gun dealers to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System in December. Nearly 500,000 of those were in the six days before Christmas.

It was the highest number ever in a single month, surpassing the previous record set in November.

On Dec 23 alone there were 102,222 background checks, making it the second busiest single day for buying guns in history.

The actual number of guns bought may have been even higher if individual customers took home more than one each.

The National Rifle Association said people were concerned about self defence because police officer numbers were declining.

A spokesman said: “I think there’s an increased realisation that when something bad occurs it’s going to be between them and the criminal.”

But anti-gun campaigners said those who already owned weapons were simply hoarding more of them due to “fear-mongering” by the NRA.

A spokeswoman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence said: “The research we’ve seen indicates fewer and fewer people are owning more and more guns.”

Dave LaRue, of Legendary Guns in Phoenix, Arizona, said Christmas sales were up 25 per cent on the previous year and ammunition sales were also “brisk”.

He said: “There are a lot of people concerned about pending gun legislation and the sense about the current administration. People think future availability will be limited and there’s a feeling of get it while you can.”

The record for gun sales in a single day was set in November, on the day after Thanksgiving, when 129,166 background searches were carried out on customers buying weapons.

Since the near-fatal shooting of congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords by a deranged gunman in Tucson, Arizona last January there have been increasing calls for tighter gun control. Miss Giffords survived being shot in the head with a semi-automatic handgun, and six other people were killed.